


little talks

by wanderinghooves



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Comfort Reading, Consent, Developing Relationship, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Heart-to-Heart, Jester Lavorre Needs a Hug, Late Night Conversations, Non-Sexual Intimacy, One Shot, POV Fjord (Critical Role), Post-Episode: c2e119, Spoilers, Talking About the Past, fjord provides some much-needed therapy, no beta we die like men, post-first kiss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-17
Updated: 2020-12-17
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:41:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28114800
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wanderinghooves/pseuds/wanderinghooves
Summary: On a night after it all, Jester slips into Fjord's bedroom- and simultaneously, the vulnerable experience of being known (and loved).or: childhood storybooks, the end of the world, and other important topics of discussion.
Relationships: Fjord & Jester Lavorre, Fjord/Jester Lavorre
Comments: 13
Kudos: 149





	little talks

Two nights later, Jester sneaks into his room.

It’s been a long day, but the unique sort of long that drags on the body while the brain fizzles with overstimulation- that cherub-faced monstrosity won’t leave his mind, nor will the visage of a certain tiefling- so Fjord isn’t asleep despite the late hour. Instead, he lounges diagonally across the bed, one hand propped against his cheek as the other idly traces lines of text from a sizeable book.

Reading for leisure is rather uncharacteristic of him- it isn’t that Fjord _dislikes_ reading, it's just never become much of a pastime considering the circumstances of his adulthood- but this evening’s bout of insomnia had provided suitable motivation for him to finally cross to the room’s far corner and inspect the ample bookcase provided by through the Tower’s arcane stylings. 

The contents found there had tugged a smirk to his face as he’d perused titles of _A Hundred and One Sailor’s Knots, Naval Conflicts on the Lucidian 516-532 PD, The Sea Wolf Brigade: A Pirate’s Account_ , amused by Caleb’s heavy-handedness. His gaze, however, had snagged stock-still on one volume in particular, its thick spine scrawled with silver script reading _Collected Folktales of the Suavain Islands._

“I’ll be damned...”

This copy is immaculately new, its pages crisp and clean to the touch, but as he pulls the book from its place on the shelf Fjord’s mind rockets back two decades to Port Damali and the orphanage and suddenly he’s a child again, curled under the thin blankets of a too-small bunk as the hazy figure of an older child reads aloud nearby. 

The memory is so sudden, so vivid that he finds himself dizzy on his feet as he retreats to the bed.

The cover is a striking sea green dotted with tiny embellishments of sea creatures both real and mythical, and Fjord thumbs the title with a conflicted sort of reverence before cracking open the pages. He wants to wonder how Caleb could’ve known, but in this moment he can’t really bring himself to care. The interior lettering is exactly as he recalls, script swirling across pages in a fluid hand, and his eyes crinkle at the corners as he flips through. Of all the elements he’d carried from his upbringing, these stories were some of the few bright spots. 

However, there is one tale contained in this book that Fjord _knows_ , knowns somewhere deep in the core of himself where only the most formative memories lie, so as the initial wave of recollections recedes he begins to rapidly card through chunks of pages in determined search.

The sudden wave of concentrated nostalgia that overcomes him upon turning to the title page of _The Mermaid and The Mariner_ forces an exhale from his chest, and somewhere in the back of his mind Fjord knows he’s wearing the kind of expression that Beau would laugh and needle him about for weeks. 

He’s barely read the opening line when the bedroom door creaks open, and his gaze lifts to see the crouched form of Jester creep inside.

She shuts the door behind her with wincing delicacy before turning to face him, her expression victorious.

“I did it! I snuck into your _room!”_

Fjord just stares at her, completely and utterly unprepared for this encounter. With all remaining composure, he manages to shove _Collected Folktales_ under his blankets and out of sight.

“I- uh- Jester-! Well- ”

She balks a little at his spluttering, shifting her feet.

“Sorry, I know I probably should’ve like, messaged, or something- ”

Fjord’s hands wave frantically; his brain is _way_ too concerned about seeing Jester clad in only a night slip.

“No! No. It’s fine- ”

“-should’ve let you know I was coming- ”

“-always glad to see you- ”

Her fingers fidget at each other and she looks at the floor.

“-I just- I couldn’t sleep, you know?”

Her drop in demeanor breaks Fjord out of his preoccupation and he frowns for a moment. Jester’s eyes flit up at him a couple of times and so after a pause he sits up, patting the bed next to him. 

She slinks over and perches herself on the spot.

“...What’s up?”

Jester sighs, her form slumping.

“I don’t know, just the end of the world?” 

Fjord’s jaw clenches and he thinks about where the Nein had been today, where they still _are,_ technically, despite the extradimensional conjuration currently surrounding them. If history is anything to go by, the Aeorian ruins plant a seed of corruption in everything they contact- a fact slightly more than incredibly dire. 

“Sort of seems that way, huh?”

She shuts her eyes and, after a moment, responds in a tone more serious than Fjord can recall.

“You have no idea.”

That sends chills through his stomach, and without thinking his hand slides up to rest on her shoulder. There is a long, silent pause in which he musters all the courage he has left at this time of night.

“...I don’t mean to pry, but- do you want to talk about it?”

“Which ‘it’?”

His frown deepens.

“You know which. The vision that the statues gave you. When you...” 

_When you aged,_ Fjord thinks, but he can’t say it out loud because they have done such an excellent job of avoiding confronting that fact up to this point, and he does not want to be the one to force it out into the open.

She lets it slide seemingly without notice, rubbing at her face with the palm of her hand.

“They showed me the city. The one that was hunting Vokodo in the Astral Plane. That was _alive,_ somehow.”

Fjord recalls Caduceus’s words from weeks ago at Rumblecusp, the haunted, drawn looks he’d worn in moments when he thought no one was watching. It sickens him to think of Jester carrying that horror. 

“Alive?”

She turns to look at him, and he sees with a pang that the same fear is there. 

“Alive. It was like- It was like nothing we’ve ever seen, nothing I can even explain, Fjord. It was stone and brick and mortar but it was also lungs and veins and flesh. It moved, it spoke. It _ate._ And Lucien and the Tombtakers want to bring it _back_.”

Her lip quivers and she’s moved in towards him, so he pulls her into a hug. He’s clutched with a sudden, fierce urge to demand of the heavens why they would allow for this to happen to _her_ of all people, but he swallows it. He will be here for her right now.

“They’re not going to bring it back, Jester, I promise. Just like you told me before, we are going to fight this thing. All of us- me, Beau, Caleb, Yasha, Veth, Caduceus- we'll be right there to help you.”

She breathes with strained control, pressing her face deeper into his chest. 

“I know we will. But what if that’s it? What if that’s- what if that’s where it all ends?”

Fjord squeezes his eyes shut and rests his chin against her head.

“It won’t be. And even if it is… I’m proud of what we’ve already done.”

She doesn’t reply, and they remain in silence, embraced, for a long time. 

Eventually Jester pulls back, her face surprisingly dry. There’s a hard-set expression on her face, but Fjord can’t place the emotion.

“Can I kiss you?”

He blinks.

“What? Oh- yes, of course.”

She leans forward, her hands pressing into his thighs, and kisses him with determined fervor. 

Fjord is surprised by the intensity of their second kiss but nevertheless pleased, shifting his position so that she can meet him more comfortably. He slides a hand up to the back of her neck, holding her close. 

He’s no sooner situated himself when Jester begins to push herself against him harder, urging him down onto the pillows. He can feel himself begin to flush down into the torso and brings a second hand up to cup her face as the kisses deepen. Jester’s own hands shudder against his chest.

She starts to unbutton his shirt.

Fjord can’t help but feel his eyes go wide when this happens- he’d never expected her to be this forward- but he is more than enthusiastic to do anything she wants, and so he nods for her to continue. He can’t _believe_ how long it took for him to kiss her in the first place, much less- 

Jester’s making quick work of the buttons so Fjord takes the liberty of running a hand over to the tie of her nightdress, preparing to give a gentle tug- and she freezes.

The fingers that moments ago were unfastening his shirt like clockwork fumble to a stop and he can feel her head pull away from his ever so slightly, her breath held.

Fjord looks up at her, quizzical, but her face is obscured by a shock of blue hair.

“Jester?”

Her voice is unnaturally stilted when she replies.

“...Uh- sorry, I just- um- I don’t- ”

She’s scared.

Fjord carefully pulls his hand down from her back, tie left untouched. Jester still doesn’t move in the several ensuing moments, so he murmurs back up to her.

“We don’t have to do this, Jess.”

She shrinks away from him at the words, retreating off and back to her prior position at the foot of the bed. Fjord sits back up, gaze locked on her.

After a moment she shifts and the hair falls away from the face, and he sees that she is crying. 

Her head whips away as soon as she notices. His shoulders fall.

“...Jester. Please, talk to me.”

The eventual reply quivers so badly that it is almost unintelligible. 

“Do you- I thought that you liked me?”

Cold arrows pierce his heart from a dozen directions.

“I _do_ like you. I like you so, so much.”

She mops at her face with the sleeves of her dress.

“...But- you didn’t want to…”

He slides a hand forward against the blankets, close but not touching her.

“I don’t want to make you do something that _you_ don’t want. _Because_ I like you.”

There is a pause. More face-mopping. Another pause. Finally she takes his hand, and he runs a thumb over her knuckles for several moments. 

“I care about you more than I have ever cared about anyone. I won’t do anything to betray that.”

She dares to look back at him. The tears aren’t flowing as heavily, but her eyes are still incredibly watery. She sniffs a little. 

“I care about you too. A lot. And I thought- I thought that maybe, if I gave you...”

Despite everything, Fjord’s lips twitch in a wistful smile.

“I _know,_ Jester. You don’t need to prove anything to me.”

She frowns, breath coming out in a huff, and then finally spills.

“I just- I just don’t know what I _want_ right now. Everything is going to hell around us with Lucien, and Vess, and the Dynasty and the Empire and who knows what else. I don’t even know what’s really going _on_ , or what to think or who to trust, but I don’t want to, like, freak everybody else out, because they all have their own things to deal with- “

There is a pause in which she hiccups.

“-But then I talked to those statues the other day and they showed me Aeor- _all_ of it, the things it can do to people- and then I aged _five years_ and I can’t even begin to comprehend what that means for everything else in my life, so I feel like I need to do everything all at once right now... I just want to know what I should _do_ , Fjord.”

She hangs her head, the tears flowing anew, and leans forward into his shoulder. He rubs the small of her back, slow and rhythmic. 

“I wish I could tell you that there was some master plan for all of this. It would make everything easier. But there just isn’t. I’m scared too, Jester, more scared of what’s to come than I’ve ever felt since I’ve been with you, with the Nein. I think everyone is. All we can do is count on the fact that we have each other through everything, no matter what happens.”

Muffled sobs wrack her form, and he strokes her hair as he continues.

“Watching you get trapped in those statues- that was _terrifying,_ Jester- and all I did was watch from the outside. I can’t even begin to imagine what it was like for you to actually experience that, and I think you’re incredibly strong for coping with it as well as you have. But nobody can expect you not to be affected by things like that. You’re _allowed_ to be unhappy. You’re allowed to be uncertain. It’s just part of being a person.” 

Her hands are clutched tight into the front of his shirt and she continues to cry, his hands in her hair, for several more minutes. 

The sobs gradually fade.

Eventually she pulls away, slowly lifting her head.

“...Thanks, Fjord.”

“Of course.”

With the nudge of a palm, he lifts her chin so that her face meets his. He thumbs away a few residual tear tracks, tucks a stray lock of hair behind her ear. She closes her eyes and musters a hint of a smile at the gesture.

“Can I sleep with you tonight?”

He pauses.

“Do you- ”

She shakes her head, sensing his concern.

“I mean just _sleep._ I don’t want to go back to my room, by myself.”

He nods, raising his hands.

“In that case, certainly. Though Caduceus does say I snore like a moorbounder.”

She snorts at that but can’t resist the grin that spreads across her face. Fjord’s heart expands tenfold.

“Well, you can’t be any worse than Beau. She’s a full-on balgura.”

He raises his eyebrows in mock surprise. 

“Is she? Well, I’ll just have to store that tidbit away for an opportune moment.” 

She gives him a look.

“Like what?”

He strokes his chin thoughtfully. 

“Hmm, let’s see. Maybe the next time we run into a member of the Cobalt Soul? Wait, no- at a romantic dinner with Yasha, that would be _excellent_.”

He jumps suddenly as Jester smacks him on the arm.

“Don’t you dare! They’re dragging their feet enough already, don’t jinx it.”

He bops her on the nose with a forefinger.

“Maybe Yasha likes a woman that can snore, you don’t know!”

She pulls a face as she flicks at his forehead.

“Nobody likes _anybody_ that snores, you- ”

Her sentence is cut abruptly short as Fjord poffs her in the face with a pillow. 

This incites a brief but impassioned bout of bedding-based warfare in which Jester gains the upper hand with comical ease- Fjord forgets just how bloody _strong_ she is- and before he knows it he’s flat on his back and pinned under a sizeable mound of pillows. 

Jester victoriously hoists a wad of blankets, prepared to deal the killing blow, but then a heavy object tumbles out of the bundle and onto the bed before her.

Fjord stretches up to look as she pauses and is utterly mortified to see her hold the cover of _Collected Folktales_ up to the light. An expression of confusion- turned recognition- turned _delight_ spreads dangerously across her face.

“Fjord, you’re reading- ”

He unearths an arm from beneath the swath pillows in a desperate attempt to swat the book out of her grasp, but she wriggles skillfully out of reach, flipping through pages in glee.

“No, _no,_ I’m not- don’t know what you mean- ”

“-I _love_ these fairy tales-”

“- _not_ fairy tales, it says _folk_ tales right there in the title- ”

Fjord finally manages to extract himself from the tangle of bedding just in time to see Jester arrive at one of the many title pages. One hand flies to her mouth as she does, a gasp escaping between her fingers.

“Oh my gosh, I _remember_ \- this was my _favorite_ …”

He sits up to look over her shoulder and immediately feels his face flush a half-dozen shades as the familiar words of _The Mermaid and The Mariner_ greet his gaze. Jester doesn’t notice, mesmerized as she traces a finger across the title’s silver lettering. 

After a moment in which Fjord’s brain is forcibly returned to equilibrium, he speaks.

“So you… know this book?”

Jester’s head whips around to face him with incredulity.

“ _Know_ it? I _love_ it!”

She foists the book up at him, clutching the pages in delight. 

“The Traveler used to read me stories from this every night as a kid- I didn’t realize that it was actually _real!”_

Fjord just stares at her. 

_“_ The _Traveler_ owned a copy of this?”

“Well it wasn’t, like, a physical thing, I just remember him pulling it out of thin air next to my bed. But it was _this_ book, Fjord.”

“And he read you _The Mermaid and The Mariner?”_

Her smile grows nostalgic and he can see her gaze peer back into a vault of fond memories. 

“At least a hundred times, probably. It was my favorite- he’d conjure up the illustrations like moving pictures and I couldn’t get enough of how the mermaid’s scales looked when she swam, they were so colorful and glittery...”

Fjord’s mouth breaks into a half-grin despite himself- of course she did, the image is so overwhelmingly _Jester_.

“But how do _you_ know it? I don’t think the Traveler was reading you bedtime stories.”

She’s looking at him with such playful curiosity that he can’t bring himself to front, and he rubs his jaw a bit sheepishly.

“Um, well- you know how I grew up in Port Damali- this was one of the few of books that the orphanage had, and I just, I don’t know... got attached to it.”

Jester’s eyes fill with such softness that he has to look away for fear of blushing any deeper.

“That’s so _sweet,_ Fjord. What was your favorite story?”

His hands clench in the bedsheets next to him as if this will somehow wick away his embarassment.

“Well- the same, actually- _The Mermaid and The Mariner_. The older kids would read it aloud at night and I, uh… liked to picture myself as the ship captain.”

Jester clasps her hands and coos the world’s gentlest “ _awww”_ at the concept. 

Fjord very much wants to bury his face in a pillow right now, but before he has a chance Jester flops herself down onto the bed and motions for him to as well. 

“Alright, that settles it. We’re going to have story time.”

Fjord furrows his brow but gradually slides down beside her nonetheless.

“...We’re doing what?”

Jester burrows up into his armpit like an enthusiastic mole, propping the book against his stomach. 

“Come on, we both love this book, and it’s been a really _fucking_ long day. Can we please read the story?”

She’s giving him the big lavender puppy-dog eyes and Fjord decides he doesn’t have an option anyway, so he wraps an arm around her shoulders with mock resignation and shifts the book to where he can see.

“Just this _once_ is fine, I suppose... I take it you want _me_ to read?”

She arranges her face into what he assumes she considers an expression of innocent surprise. 

“Oh- well, if you’re _offering,_ that would be lovely.”

He rolls his eyes and she grins widely.

“Alright, here goes, but I can’t promise it’ll be up to the Traveler's quality."

Clearing his throat, he begins to recite the first line.

_"Many years ago, in the old port city of Cordelia, there lived a mariner by the name of Lir…”_

It’s almost comical how quickly Fjord finds himself drawn back into the story, with Jester even managing to wheedle him into doing different character voices as he reads. Lir is deep and gravelly- “he’s the leading man, Fjord, he _has_ to be hot- ” while the rest of the legendary _Sea Swallow’s_ crew are a motley mix of squeaky, snarky, and gruff. Jester makes the executive decision to voice the titular mermaid herself while subsequently goading Fjord to turn the infamous pirate Grimmsides into some sort of high-pitched, nasally shrew. _The Mermaid and The Mariner_ isn’t a lengthy story by any means, and yet Fjord still finds himself losing track of time as Jester giggles and sighs next to him.

The ending does eventually come, however, and as Fjord finishes narrating Lir’s wedding to the mermaid he realizes that Jester has gone silent at his side. Glancing down, he sees that she’s drifted off to sleep in the crook of his arm. 

Somewhere he recognizes that it’s probably improper to stare while someone sleeps but Jester’s face looks as if a hundred pounds of weight have been lifted from her shoulders, and so his gaze lingers for several tender moments. 

Slowly shifting to avoid disturbing her, he brushes the hair away from her forehead and presses a kiss to her temple.

Maybe, just maybe, he also whispers that he loves her, but then there’s no one around to know. 


End file.
